


If The Heavens May Break

by Tousled_Sky



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Aging, Angst, Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Crying, Depression, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Healing, Hurt/Comfort, Moving On, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Suicidal Thoughts, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-06
Updated: 2019-12-06
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:54:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21687898
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tousled_Sky/pseuds/Tousled_Sky
Summary: Bucky's life had a very simple pattern; everyone that he cared for either died or left him.Perhaps it was foolish to believe that Steve might break that pattern.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 2
Kudos: 56





	If The Heavens May Break

**Author's Note:**

> As always, mind the tags, in particular that of "Major Character Death".  
> Title is from I'll Be There by Hollywood Undead. It's about losing a friend; I thought it fitting.

Everyone dies.

For a child growing up during the Great Depression, this was a harsh and painful lesson that was learned early and reinforced often. Bucky saw many around him fall to the Reaper; neighbors, classmates, friends. Eventually, he even lost his mother to death’s scythe.

It wasn’t just those who died that left him, though. Becky was taken by the state once their mother passed; the younger sister whom Bucky had loved, but never saw again. His father had left them so long ago that Bucky didn’t even remember what he looked like. Girlfriends who Bucky nearly bought a ring for, who told him that they loved him, walking out and disappearing into the crowds.

People left, and people died. Bucky saw this in the Army more than ever, but he hadn’t needed to fight a war to learn it. It was a very simple pattern; everyone that Bucky cared for either died or left him.

Bucky supposes it was foolish to believe that Steve might break that pattern.

\---

For a long time, Bucky really believed Steve may be the exception.

It wasn’t a point of much blame; perhaps it made sense that Bucky had believed Steve might stay the constant in his life forever. As everyone around him died, Steve lived on (sometimes to the surprise of them both, considering how sickly he was). As those who survived walked out of his life, Steve’s footsteps always led back to Bucky.

Of course, Bucky knew Steve would die someday; he had learned that much early on. Hell, Bucky would die someday as well. But he’d hoped that Steve wouldn’t die much earlier than he did (though asthma and a laundry list of other aliments often threatened to shatter this hope); that they could both live a full life and spend it together, as best friends should.

This hope had turned to belief when Steve had told him that he’d be with him until the end of the line.

Back then, Bucky hadn’t known that Steve’s line ended far before his own.

\---

Bucky doesn’t see Steve often anymore.

Of course, he sees him sometimes, but it’s not frequently. He’s seen Steve perhaps five times in as many months or more. Steve lives with his family now, but he’ll visit Bucky and the others at the Avengers compound.

Despite how much Bucky misses Steve, when Steve comes to visit, it tends to make Bucky uncomfortable. Though Bucky may ache to see Steve again, this person isn’t Steve; at least, not Bucky’s Steve. The decades he’s lived with Peggy, with his children, with people that are and will always be strangers to Bucky have changed him. When he visits, Bucky can’t find the little guy from Brooklyn he used to know anywhere in those blue eyes.

It's not as if Steve’s years have changed him into someone terrible. Steve isn’t malicious or cruel now; he’s just as noble and virtuous as ever. He hasn’t changed into a bad person. But he’s changed nonetheless, and he’s changed into a person Bucky doesn’t know.

\---

Another source of discomfort when Bucky sees Steve now is that every time he visits, he looks a little older, a little thinner; in short, a little closer to death.

The far-off knowledge that Steve would die someday (once as distant and abstract a concept as Bucky’s own mortality, especially after Steve received the serum) was suddenly front and center.

Steve is old, and he is dying. The only person who Bucky loved who hadn’t left him or died had left him, and now was dying.

A lifetime ago, if Steve had died, Bucky would have been the only mourner. Back in that life, so far away from this one, Steve was just like Bucky; another kid who’d lost everything. Bucky was the closest thing Steve had to a family.

Now, Bucky wonders if he’ll even know when Steve passes. After all, that’s the business of Steve’s family; something Bucky isn’t.

Not anymore.

\---

Years pass.

The surviving Avengers try to help rebuild the world from the ashes. It’s taxing work, hard and thankless. There are so many names etched on those stone tablets who never come back; it eventually comes to light that they died in the chaos of the aftermath of the snap, instead of being dusted all those years ago. Many who do come back die in the mayhem that follows their return; there’s a non-insignificant number of people brought back who never make it past the first minute. Folk who had been driving on the freeway when they vanished suddenly materialize in the path of 18-wheelers that just can’t stop in time. People fall from the skies where airplanes had lost half their passengers five years ago.

People never want to hear that their loved ones are dead, but more often than not, that’s the news the Avengers have to deliver.

Steve continues to visit the compound, and Bucky watches as he comes through their door first with a cane, then later, in a wheelchair. Bucky hugs Steve when he comes to visit, he sits and talks with him, but the detachment he feels from the one person he’d always had a special connection with makes him ache in a way that words could never take the shape of.

Sometimes, from the look on Steve’s face during visits, Bucky wonders if he himself is as much a stranger to Steve now as Steve is to Bucky. If over the lifetime he spent away, Steve forgot all about Bucky.

Bucky wishes, in particularly dark moments, that he could forget about Steve.

\---

The first time Steve doesn’t recognize him, Bucky cries.

Bucky hadn’t cried before then. Not when Steve showed up on a bench rather than a platform. Not when he woke from dreams where HYDRA was still cutting him to pieces. Not during the exhausting, endless rebuilding, the delivering of news that they knew families would never recover from.

But Bucky cried when Steve, old and small and frail, with his son pushing him in his wheelchair, doesn’t recognize Bucky.

Steve had known Bucky his whole life; hell, Steve had known his name when Bucky himself had no clue who the hell “Bucky” was.

What an irony it was, how that was mirrored now.

Though Bucky could never be thankful to HYDRA, he does appreciate the training he’d received in espionage when it allows him to slip out of the room quietly; hopefully before anyone had noticed the brimming in his eyes.

When Sam found him (with eyes red and swollen but dry), sometime later, it was on the bench in the courtyard where Steve had surrendered his shield to the new Captain America.

\---

Not long after that day, Steve dies.

Bucky doesn’t cry when Sam tell him. He feels numb, dead to the world, and at the same time overwhelmed.

Bucky had always known it was a possibility that Steve might die before him. How many times had Steve gotten sick back in the Depression, coughing and sweating with fever as Bucky sat next to him, holding Steve’s clammy hands in his own and wishing fervently that they could afford medication? How many times had Steve fought a guy who might have been a little bit too big, too mean; how often had he gotten into a scrape that he almost didn’t get out of? How many close calls had they had during the war; how many enemies had taken aim at Steve that Bucky had almost missed through his scope?

So Bucky had always known that Steve might die before he did.

But he’d hoped and prayed that it would never happen.

\---

Nothing helps.

Bucky feels like a marionette with all the strings cut; a puppet lying lifelessly on the ground. In some ways, this was a long time coming. The war cut through some of his strings, HYDRA cut through others. Steve’s death was the blade that sliced cleanly through the final string, the last thing that was holding him up.

He vaguely recalls the funeral, which was horrible. Crowds lined the streets as the hearse drove through, flashbulbs going off and camera lenses wherever you looked. The media weren’t the only ones there; there were so many people, all crowding them, the noise a roar all around. It did Bucky’s PTSD no favors; he was barely able to stave off the panic he felt creeping up the back of his neck and slowly crushing his lungs.

All his panic attacks are worse now; though not a daily occurrence, they’re fairly frequent. They’re brutal as well; courtesy of his time spent at HYDRA, which left his psyche in shatters. Many years ago, when Bucky had had panic attacks, Steve would often come sit with him. He’d talk softly to Bucky, touch him on his shoulder, and the sound and feel of Steve would help ground Bucky, help bring him back from the terrifying depths of his own mind.

Recalling the gentleness and care in Steve’s grounding touch only serves to heighten his already exacerbated attacks. Every time he thinks of it now, there’s a roar his head reminding him that he’ll never feel it again.

\---

As the days go on, and the numb fog slowly lifts, Bucky’s listlessness starts to give way to a different, more volatile emotion.

Bucky’s angry. He’s angry at Steve’s family, who knew that this hospital stay would be Steve’s last and never reached out to Bucky for him to come see Steve, to say a final farewell. He’s angry they were able to stand at Steve’s side while he took his last breathes while Bucky never even got to say goodbye.

He’s angry at himself, for being so detached and distant from Steve in these past few months; for not making more of an effort to get to know the person Steve had become while he was still here, while Bucky still could. For fuck’s sake, Steve had been _right in front of him_ not long ago, his blue eyes looking into Bucky’s own. If he had just made a little more of an effort, tried a little harder to make Steve less of a stranger, maybe this wouldn’t hurt so badly. It would still hurt, but maybe not so horribly; maybe he wouldn’t feel so empty, so sick. He’s angry at himself for not trying harder to make Steve stay in the first place. Maybe if he had told Steve how he felt, told him before the stones had to be returned, Steve would still be here. Maybe if he hadn’t been so fucked up after Steve had finally pried him out of HYDRA’s claws, Steve would have stayed.

Mostly, though, he’s angry at Steve. Because Steve left.

He left and he never looked back.

\---

At night, Bucky cries.

It hurts; goddammit, it hurts _so much._ Even if the Steve that died was different than the one that Bucky loved, Bucky misses him. He missed him before, too; he’d missed him after Steve had come back different, missed the Steve who this Steve wasn’t.

It turns out, missing someone is different once they’re dead and gone.

Bucky has even more trouble sleeping than he used to, and when he does sleep he dreams of Steve. In some dreams, they’re back in the 1930’s; just the two of them in the little Brooklyn flat they’d shared so long ago. In the dreams, it’s just as imperfect as it was back then; the flat was too small, dirty and cold, the air thick and smoggy, and Steve was too small and too skinny and always sick. But he was there, and he was alive.

In other dreams, they’re in the Avenger’s compound with Steve visiting; sometimes leaning on his cane, sometimes in his wheelchair. In these dreams, though, something’s changed; those blue eyes aren’t as different as they’d been in real life. Bucky sees the Steve he loved in them; sees the Steve he’d lived with in the Brooklyn flat, the Steve that he’d pulled out of the river once upon a time. In these dreams, the man sitting in front of him isn’t a stranger anymore. He’s not just Steve, he’s _Bucky’s_ Steve.

In many (most) of the dreams, Steve comes back that fateful afternoon only five seconds older. He materializes on the platform, still young and healthy and still _himself_ , instead of a stranger with his name and face. He hops down and hugs Bucky, and Bucky hugs back fiercely, immeasurably happy that Steve decided to stay; that his footsteps led back to Bucky like they always had before.

The last variety of dreams are the worst ones, because no matter how desperately he sometimes wishes he could, he can’t sleep forever. He has to wake up sometime, and when he wakes, Steve is dead. Steve is dead, and Bucky just wants him back, just wants him to be alive again.

So Bucky cries in the mornings, too.

\---

Nothing makes it better.

People tell him to do things that make him happy, that that’s supposed to help with grief. The only issue is, nothing really made him happy after Steve left. He’s been running mostly on autopilot for the past four years. There have been bright spots, happy moments, but they’re few and far between, and never shine as brightly as any of the time he spent with Steve.

Others urge him to face his grief, to process it, but Bucky has no idea how to do that. The grief he feels is a faceless, shapeless thing; it feels like a fog surrounding him, turning the air around him too heavy to breathe and suffocating him. He doesn’t know how to face it when it’s wrapped around him on all sides.

Some of the Avengers suggest they go visit Steve’s grave, but all that does is makes Bucky angry. There’s a crowd of people there; fans of the Avengers sitting at Steve’s grave, mourning him. The ground around the gravestone has dozens of little American flags stuck into it, the green grass barely visible under the mass of red, white, and blue flower petals.

Maybe he should feel grateful that so many people are at Steve’s grave, that so many people loved him and are paying their respects to him. He doesn’t. Perhaps it’s selfish, but all he feels is anger, burning and encompassing. He’s furious that these people that didn’t even know Steve could sit by his grave and cry. Bucky was the one who sat up nights with Steve as he shook with fever, who sponged blood off his face after a rough fight in an alley. Bucky was the one who fought by his side in WWII, was the one who refused to leave the burning warehouse without Steve. Bucky _loved_ Steve.

It makes anger choke him, that these strangers felt they had the right to feel anything close to what Bucky was feeling over Steve’s death.

(Bucky wonders if Steve’s family sees him grieving and thinks the same thing).

\---

On the nights that sleep eludes him completely, Bucky goes to the roof.

He likes the roof. It’s cooler up here in the heat of summer, particularly at night. It’s quieter all the way up here, so far above the noise of the rat race down on the street. This high above all the lights, he can sometimes even see the stars in the dark night sky.

He and Steve used to go up to the roof of their own small flat, way back in the 30s. Back then, it was mostly just to cool off; it was a rare night if you could see the stars. Though light pollution wasn’t such an issue back then, air pollution sure as hell was, and most nights, the smog blocked out the stars.

Steve had always loved watching the stars when they were out, though. Bucky enjoyed the clear nights as well; the stars were okay, but what he really loved was watching Steve watch the stars. Bucky loved the way his eyes shone, the way his smile lit up the night.

Even when painful memories of Steve surface, it’s a comfort to see the stars. Most everything’s different now; this city’s changed, the world at large has changed, Steve has (or _had_ ) changed. Hell, Bucky’s changed more than he cares to admit.

But the stars in the sky are still the same.

\---

Most nights, Bucky sits on the chairs on the roof, looks out over the cityscape or up at the stars or down at his hands by turn.

Some nights, he lies on his back on the patio tiles, pillowing his head with interlocked hands. He looks up at the stars and the moon and wonders if there’s anyone up there. Gods, or ghosts, or…well, anyone at all.

Other nights (bad nights, typically), he sits on the edge of the roof, staring out over the vast expanse of city lights and star-filled sky without really taking any of it in. Often, sitting on the edge, with the wild winds of the high atmospheres ripping at the fabric of his shirt, at the locks of his hair, he’ll peer down over the edge to see the smudged lights and grey city below him. He’ll imagine pushing himself off the edge to fall through the dark, empty space until he hits the street so far below. Wonder how much it’d hurt, how long it’d take. Wonders where he’d end up on the other side.

Wonders if he’d see Steve again.

\---

It’s on one of these bad nights, sitting on the edge, that Bucky receives company.

Sam sits down next to Bucky on the ledge, his feet still flat on the patio tiles (unlike Bucky’s, which slice though empty air with his idle kicks). He, like Bucky, looks like he’s hardly slept that night, despite the fact that the clock’s creeping further and further into the AM, and the sky’s turning from black to a dull grey with the endless, steady passage of time.

“Hey, Bucky,” Sam says, and something about his voice, soft and pained, makes Bucky’s eyes prick with tears. He turns to look at Sam.

He hasn’t seen Sam in a while. Bucky finds it too draining to go out and help with the reconstruction most days, but Sam and some of the other inhabitants of the tower go out fairly often. Perhaps they find the work rewarding and healing. Perhaps they need something to keep them occupied in order to deal with their grief. Perhaps they’ve moved on from Steve’s passing far quicker than Bucky, already able to resume the patterns of daily life.

Whatever his reasons may be, Sam’s been gone often, and over the past few months Bucky’s mostly seen him on screen, fully in costume. Now, however, he’s sitting next to Bucky; without his TV smile, without the shield, dressed in just jeans and a t-shirt. Not on a screen. Not Captain America. Just Sam.

“Hey,” Bucky replies, trying to swallow the roughness in his voice, to blink back the tears that threaten to spill over his lashes.

“I, uh,” Sam starts, clearly not sure how to choose his words. “I know I’ve been busy lately, and I haven’t been here a lot. I haven’t really been there for you; for anyone, really. I figured out a little while ago that going like I’ve been going isn’t helping me work through Steve’s death at all. I talked to SHIELD, and they agreed to give me time off for bereavement. So, if you ever wanna talk, I’m here.”

Bucky smiles feebly, not sure if the expression reaches his eyes or not. Others have offered the same before, but Bucky’s never taken them up on it. He might want to talk about Steve, but somehow he’s never been able to find the right words for the feelings all tangled up inside him, shadowing his days and keeping him up nights. “Thank you, Sam.”

“I mean it, Buck. I loved the guy, but I know you’ve gone through a hell of a lot more with him than I did. You two met 100 years ago. He meant a lot to you; losing him must hurt.”

Bucky nods a little tightly, turning his face from Sam to look out over the sky as it brightens little by little, the first sunbeams of morning struggling their way up over the horizon as the stars slowly faded away above them. “Do you think he’s out there, somewhere?”

“Somewhere,” Sam replies. “I’m not sure about where we go when we die; no one is, I suppose. But wherever Steve is now, I like to think he’s at peace”.

“He forgot me,” Bucky blurts suddenly, feeling silly and childish and selfish as soon as the words leave his lips, wanting to take them back. Of course he can’t, nor can he stop speaking; it’s as if a dam’s broken, and the words spill unbidden from him. “He knew me when I didn’t even know myself, and then he just forgot about me; he saw me and he didn’t even know who I was.” The early morning sky blurs into smudges and streaks of light, and he scrubs his sleeve over his eyes as tears he had no prayer of forcing back down spill over. “I loved him, Sam. Did I really mean that little to him?”

Sam reaches over and puts a hand on Bucky’s shoulder gently; the touch different from Steve’s, but comforting and grounding nonetheless.

“He was old, Bucky,” Sam says, voice soft but sure. “He was dying, and he got confused about things. Just because he was confused and couldn’t remember you doesn’t mean he didn’t care for you.”

“He left,” Bucky says, the words sounding petulant but ripped straight from his heart. “Why would he leave if he loved me?”

Sam shrugs helplessly. “I wish I knew, Bucky. Steve did things that I wish he’d done differently. I’m happy that he got to live his life, and that it was a good life, but I also wish he was still here. After he came back, I asked him once or twice why he decided to stay in the past, but he never gave me an answer I was happy with. I don’t know if we’ll ever know why he left us. But he didn’t do it because of us, because of something we did or something we didn’t do. He didn’t leave because he didn’t care. He loved us. He loved _you_ , Bucky.”

_Not the way I loved him,_ Bucky thinks, the words sharp as a blade and twice as painful. _If he did, he would never have left me._

“I used to think that,” Bucky says, looking out over the vast expanse of city. “I’m not so sure anymore.”

“…I actually have something here that I wanted to give you,” Sam said after a few moments, breaking the tense silence that followed Bucky’s words. He pulled something from the pack by his feet. “Steve’s family wanted you to have this. I think they knew how much it’d mean to you.”

He placed an old sketchbook into Bucky’s hands.

Bucky opened the front cover with fingers that felt a bit numb. On the inside cover, _Steve Rogers_ was written in a familiar hand.

Suddenly terrified of dropping the book, Bucky pushed himself back onto the ledge, further away from the edge. Once he was far back enough that he wasn’t in any danger of the book falling away to the street below, he sat with Sam and flipped through the pages.

Grey pencil lines formed a picture of a New York City long since changed. Drawings of time spent in the army; of places they’d been camped at, of things that they’d seen.

And then, a sketch of Bucky was laid out on the paper before him.

Bucky stared down at the sketchbook. Steve had drawn Bucky standing and laughing with a solider who’s name he didn’t quite remember, though the sketch of his face made something deep within Bucky’s mind flicker; a friend from another life. Despite the other solider, the focus of the drawing was on Bucky. In the corner, slightly faded, was the date _July 1944._ 75 years ago.

The morning light might have still been dim, but Bucky could see with more clarity than he’d had for quite a while.

He knew the Steve that drew this. The hands that sketched this out were the same ones that rested on Bucky’s shoulders to draw him out of panic. The blue eyes that saw him laughing with the solider that day were ones that Bucky would have recognized. Ones that would have recognized Bucky.

Steve came back different. But he had loved Bucky. Maybe not the way Bucky had loved him. Maybe things changed over the course of his lifetime, as new people came into his life. But 75 years ago, during that July overseas, he had cared for Bucky.

He had loved him.

That didn’t suddenly make Bucky healed; it didn’t fix everything just like that. But it did make something stir deep in his heart; something that, for once, wasn’t pain.

So it’s a good place to start.

“I’m going out in a little while for breakfast,” Sam said. “It’s a small, quiet place and no one will come up to us or bother us. If you’re feeling up to it, I’d like if you came along.”

Bucky looked to Sam, knowing this time his smile touched his eyes. “I’d like that too. Thank you, Sam. This means more to me than you know.”

Sam smiled back, expression tired but warm. “You’re welcome, Bucky.”

\---

They sat side by side on the roof and watched the sky turn blue.

For the first time in years, the sunrise was bright.


End file.
